"Well, really," said Adrea huffily, "I have known you since you were a baby, my Lady, and what I say is no more than your own mother would say, and all spoken for your own good—"
Penthesilea said peacefully, "I beg you not to quarrel; you have a long road before you. Kassandra, my dear child, even if I were free to travel with you myself to Colchis, I could not keep you safe on your road. I pray that Priam's name and Apollo's peace will do so. Perhaps it is this war, perhaps it is the spread of the Akhaian ways now that the Minoan world has fallen. You have not even told me why you are travelling to Colchis; is it simply that the Lady Imandra is your old friend, or has Priam decided to send even so far afield for allies?"
She told Penthesilea about the earthquake and the defection of the temple serpents, and the Amazon blenched at the omen.
"Still I will trust Apollo; I have none other in whom to trust," Kassandra said, "and if I can come safely to Colchis with no other safeguard than his blessing, I shall take that as a sign of his continued goodwill."
"May he bless you then and guide you," said Penthesilea, "and may Serpent Mother herself await you and give you blessing in Colchis—and everywhere else, my dear."
Soon after this they went to rest, but Kassandra lay long awake. When she slept, her dreams were restless; she was seeking something—a lost weapon, a bow perhaps - but whenever she thought she had found it, it was not the one she wanted, but was broken, or had a broken string, or something of that sort.
What was it that the Gods were saying to her? She was a priestess, she had been taught that all dreams were messages from the Gods, if she could only find the meaning; that she f could not interpret it meant only that she was, as she had long f suspected, unfit to receive the Sunlord's favour, that he had withdrawn from her. Try as she might, she could gain from it only a faint ill omen that whatever she sought on this quest, she would not find it.
In the morning Penthesilea bestowed gifts on her and her women - new saddles, and a warm robe of horsehide.
"You will need it, believe me, in crossing the Great Plain," she said. "The winters have been more severe latterly and there still may be snow."
As she embraced her in farewell, Kassandra felt like crying.
"When shall we meet again, kinswoman?"
"When the Gods will it; if it should ever be the will of Earth Mother that I should end my days in a city, I will come and end -f them in Troy, that I vow to you, my child. I do not think your I mother would fail to welcome the last of her sisters, nor would Priam turn me from his door. Perhaps I should come with my warriors and seek to drive forth some of these Akhaians."
"When that day comes, I will fight at your side," promised Kassandra, but Penthesilea only embraced her with great tenderness and said, "That is not your fate in this life, my love; |make no pledges you cannot keep," and rode away from them without looking back.
CHAPTER 15
The winter indeed lingered long on the Great Plain, and within four days after they had spent the night with Penthesilea and the remnant of her Amazons, the sky darkened and snow began to-fall so heavily that Kassandra wondered how her attendants could follow the narrow and ill-marked trail at all. All that day it continued to snow, and all the next, and although they continued to travel, they encountered no sign of human life. Once, far away through the snow, they saw a watching Kentaur outlined against the horizon; and when they would have signalled to him, he wheeled his horse and galloped away.
Kassandra was not surprised; from what Penthesilea had said, she knew that the inhabitants of the Great Plain, never particularly inclined to trust outsiders, were even less inclined to do so now. It was fortunate that she had no need to trade with them for food or any other commodities. Day after day they plodded across the Great Plain, their animals' hooves cutting through the soggy mud where there had been frozen grass, the snow never thick enough to be a danger, the dull rains never enough to thaw the frozen ground. The great steppes were empty and barren; they found little enough food to supplement their dreary travel rations, and Kassandra grew weary of riding over the empty lands, crawling under an endless sky which seemed as grey and hostile as the faces of her companions.
Day followed sullen day while the moon thinned and faded and then swelled again; how long could this winter endure? Then soon after a vagrant sight of a full moon through ragged clouds she woke to hear rushing winds and a heavy thick dripping rain which seemed to be carrying away the very land itself.
The new morning brought a countryside transformed, with little rivers flowing everywhere over the surface of the ground, shining in a new strong sun, and grass springing up everywhere, under warm soft winds. It soon grew so warm that Kassandra discarded her horsehide tunic and rode in her soft cloth chemise, since there was none to see her.
On one of these spring days they came to a village, no more than a cluster of round stone huts on the plain; but surrounding it were fields of greening winter grain uncovered from the fast vanishing snow. Kassandra remembered the blighted village of her journey with the Amazons years ago, where all the children, more or less, had been severely deformed. But if this was the same village they must somehow have survived the blight, for such children as she saw looked strong and healthy. Later though, she saw some of the older girls and boys who had only two fingers on a hand. Before this they had seen no human dwelling for eight or ten days, and when the headwoman of the village came out to meet them, she seemed glad to see them as well.
"The winter has lain long on the land," she said, "and we have seen no humans all this winter but a little band of marauding Kentaurs, so weakened with starvation that they made no attempts on our women, but only begged us for food of any sort."
"That seems sad," Kassandra said, but the headwoman wrinkled her face in disdain.
"You are a priestess; it is your work to have compassion even for such as they, I suppose. They have terrorized us too often for me to have any feeling save satisfaction when I see them brought so low. With luck they will all starve, and then we need never fear them again. Have you metals or weapons for trade? No one passes through here for trade these days; such metals as they have are all bound for the war in Troy and we can get none."
"I am sorry; I have no weapons but my own," Kassandra said. "But we will buy some of your pots if you still make them."
The pots were brought out, and lengthily examined; dark fell while they were still looking them over and the headwoman invited them to dine at her table and continue the trading in the morning. She placed one of the stone huts at their disposal, and bade them to dinner in the central hut. The food was meagre indeed - meat which seemed to be some kind of ground-squirrel, boiled in a stew with bitter acorns and tasteless white roots; but at least it was freshly cooked. Kassandra, recalling the blight, was somewhat reluctant to eat here at all, but told herself not to trouble about it.
For, while I am still of childbearing age, I suppose, I am not wed, nor likely to be. And in any case while these ladies sleep one at either side of my bed, I am scarcely likely to get myself with child. If this village had not somehow recovered from the blight, she thought, it would have vanished when every soul in it died.
A few days later they sighted the iron gates of Colchis, as high and as impressive as ever, and Kassandra attired herself not in her leather riding clothes and chemise, but in her finest Trojan robes, dyed in brilliant colours, and had one of her waiting-women dress her hair in the elaborate plaited headdress she wore in the Sunlord's Temple. At least Queen Imandra would greet her as a princess of Troy, not as a wandering supplicant.